Miranda in Milan

by Katharine Duckett

  “No.” Prospero drew himself up to his full height. “I have consulted with the true masters of the Church. I have received their blessing for my efforts. Not all will agree, of course, but I have the support of many. The ones who see reason are on my side.”

  Lies, thought Agata, but this time she did not speak aloud. She kept her eye on the creature, which reached for her still. Could it be some copy? Some phantasm, meant to deceive? But she knew Bice’s face better than her own. She knew Bice’s every expression. And the look etched into each line of this being’s hauntingly familiar face was terror.

  She had seen that look not very long ago. She had seen it as Beatrice begged Agata to burn her body and scatter the ashes to the wind.

  “Had her soul gone on to Heaven, to its final resting place, I never could have retrieved it. She was in Purgatory, for she was never meant to be taken from us so soon. But I have restored that spark of life unjustly plundered from her form by completing the great and difficult work of anastasis. It was a noble art once known to Christian mages in the Holy Land, though the knowledge was lost over centuries. I have reconstructed their writings, and now, once again, we hold the ability to create life where there was only death, to turn back the mindless tides of fate.”

  Agata knew Prospero’s tricks. She knew his powers of persuasion. His effort to exert them upon her, to convince her this was some pious and necessary act, stunk of deception. But she did not care. Here was Bice. Her Bice, Bice pulled from the safety of her grave bed. And she looked so very scared.

  She came forward, taking Bice’s cold, waxy hand with only the slightest flinch. “It’s all right,” she murmured, trying not to breathe too deeply of the fetid scent rising from her cousin’s skin. “It will be all right.”

  Prospero relaxed, stepping back. “You see, Agata? She needs someone to care for her. I must attend to other pressing matters and cannot be with her always. The world does not stop turning, even for wonders such as this.” He looked down at her, his eyes black voids in the torchlight. “Will you help her and not say a word to Antonio? He will not understand, not yet. We must give her time, time to recover, and then present her to him when she is truly whole again.”

  She felt a pang, thinking how Antonio would rejoice to see Bice’s face again, though his horror would surely match her own. “Yes.” Her voice was but a whisper. “I will help her. Tell me what she needs.”

  * * *

  She spent the first night washing the filth from Bice’s limbs, tending to the body she had seen expire only days before. The body that even now should be sleeping beneath the dirt, its soul gone to claim its eternal reward.

  Agata bathed Bice’s body in a ceramic tub Prospero had set in the room beside his blazing alchemical furnace, where the air was a little warmer, though she did not know that Bice could feel it. “Too much liquid on the skin will cause deterioration,” Prospero warned. “Use sparingly this rosewater, which ameliorates the smell.” He delivered his instructions the way he used to dictate certain household tasks, as if bathing a corpse were in no way extraordinary. Perhaps, Agata reflected, it was not for him. She had heard the stories about the foundling wheels and prisons. If his claims were true, unbaptized infants and criminals were perfect candidates for his form of redemption from Limbo and Purgatory alike. How many unfortunates had he brought back before Bice? How long did they last? How long did Bice have?

  Bice looked at her with dull, glaucous eyes as Agata ran a cloth lightly over her arm. She had bits of grime stuck to her in all kinds of places, but Agata dared not scrub the patches too hard. She did not know what was part of Bice’s body now. Even if Prospero had halted her decay, rot had set in the moment she drew her last natural breath.

  “Gata,” the creature said again, and Agata closed her eyes. Bice knew her, but Agata could not tell if she knew anything else. Did she understand what Prospero had done? Did she think? Was she truly Bice, or only a shell? In either case, Agata knew she would keep her promise not to tell Antonio, however unwillingly. Bice’s soul was in peril, caught here in this liminal state, and she did not know what would become of Bice’s spirit if harm befell this body. She had to tread carefully. Prospero believed that she trusted him, that she credited his miracle. She would keep him believing until she could determine what to do.

  The creature muttered something else. Agata ignored Bice’s complaint, patting her arm dry, until the word came again, this time clearer, more insistent.

  “Mranda.” A kind of grunt, all running together. “Mranda. Mranda.”

  Agata dropped the cloth, staring at Bice’s face. Bice turned slightly to fix her gaze upon Agata, moving her lips more deliberately now, the motion slow but certain. “Mi . . . ran . . . da. Mir . . . anda. Miranda.”

  “Bice—”

  “Miranda.”

  “Bice—” The world spun. Agata had performed this exchange over and over in the days before Bice’s passing, but death had not stopped Bice’s moans. Even now, she was crying out for her daughter. Even now, with this impossible animation, with her mind rotted by death, Miranda was all she wanted.

  Chapter 10

  Over the next few weeks, Agata spent the daylight hours in a daze and the long nights by Bice’s side in the subterranean warren that had become her home.

  Now that he felt he had won her loyalty, Prospero hardly deigned to address Agata at all, unless he had some new instruction in her care of Bice. He did not allow her to enter his other rooms, though she could hear muffled thuds and groans from them many of the nights that she visited and feel the occasional shaking of the walls. At those times she held Bice’s hand tightly, for Bice trembled whenever she heard these sounds, and Agata wondered, as she had so many times, what Bice had gone through to return to this body, to this realm.

  They stayed together in Bice’s cell, which Agata had endeavored to make feel a bit more like Bice’s grand bedroom in the ducal apartments. She brought down blankets, and tapestries to hang on the walls, and a few of Bice’s things: her favorite rings, her lyre, her little collection of books. Bice had always devoured anything that she could read, from the family Bible to the impenetrable mathematical texts Prospero allowed her to borrow because it amused him. Now, however, she only held the books in her hands, as if they were objects whose purpose she could not recall. Never once did Agata see her open them to a page.

  Just as she fixed up Bice’s quarters, so too did Agata attempt to improve Bice herself. She rouged her cheeks, and colored her lips, and dressed Bice in some of her old gowns. It always felt as though she were dressing Bice for her funeral anew. After all her fussing, Bice looked more human: still nothing like the vibrant and irrepressible woman she had been in the full bloom of her health, but Agata knew that woman was gone. What remained was a revenant. And yet every night she spent with Bice threw Agata into confusion, distancing her from the castle staff, still caught up in their mourning, still lamenting the loss of their duchess.

  Prospero had of course revealed this particular secret to no one else, though she discovered, from her nights in the cells, that he had his own trusted forces inside the castle. She saw the slender servant boy who had summoned her to the workrooms that fateful night pass in and out of the laboratorium. A dozen others she knew, others she’d seen in sunlight. They acknowledged one another with nods, and she knew they would never speak of this in the world above. If they had made some pact with Prospero, she would not reveal them to Antonio. After all, she had made her own.

  She had tried to seek answers from different priests in confession, revealing nothing of her true identity. But when she began to speak of souls brought back into dead bodies, they either dismissed her outright or reacted with vitriol, telling her she must never speak of such dark and vile sins. “These awful imaginings corrupt the virtuous, especially in the female mind, which is swayed and seduced far more easily than the male,” Father Rossi of Santa Maria delle Grazie told her. “Recite thrice the Hail Mary. Reflect upon the purity of our most b
eloved mother and banish such wicked thoughts from your mind.”

  It brought Agata no peace to think about mothers these days. She did not wish to dwell upon the strength and serenity that motherhood brought, for Bice still considered herself a mother and knew her child was only floors away. She asked for Miranda incessantly, picking up new phrases as the days dragged on. “Bring me . . . Miranda.” “I want . . . Miranda.” “Please . . . I need . . . to see . . . Miranda.”

  Agata did not know if it was due to the fumes that pervaded Prospero’s workrooms or her own true feeling for her cousin’s plight, but she had begun to consider the idea. Miranda would not necessarily know there was anything wrong with her mother, so glad would she be to see her again. And if she spoke of what she saw in the tunnels, it would only be the babblings of a child, a child who had made the servants’ lives a hell these past few weeks. She threw ceaseless tantrums, thrusting herself at the wall, digging her nails into the exposed flesh of anyone who came near her, urinating on the floor though she was old enough to know better. Agata had never seen the like. The child was too small to beat properly, in the manner Agata felt would improve her behavior. Only Prospero could subdue her, when he came to the nursery to comfort her, which he hardly did enough.

  After one of these daylong crying jags from Miranda, and after descending to the tunnels to find Bice making the same plaintive request she always made, Agata confronted Prospero. He was working in one of his inner rooms, but she hammered on the door until he opened it, attempting to stand strong under his withering gaze.

  “We should bring her Miranda,” she began, pushing out the words in a rush. “Their cleaving has left them both inconsolable, and nothing else will heal this rift. Let me bring Miranda here for only an hour, maybe two. Every fifth night, let’s say, so that they have something to look forward to.”

  Prospero looked down at her with the distant expression he often wore, as though he were God Himself and she some unworthy petitioner, begging for His mercy. “No.”

  “No?” She felt her cheeks flush at his refusal. “Your Grace, if they continue on this way, both of them will lose their minds. You cannot give a mother life again and keep her from her child!”

  “I can.” He started to close the door, but Agata stuck a foot into the doorway. She breathed hard for a moment as he studied her, afraid that he might strike. But he only laughed. “One day, perhaps, Agata. One day, when the world I wish to make is manifest. This age has little room for genius, for vision. But it will change. I promise you; it will change.”

  He pushed her back gently and closed the door.

  * * *

  The next night Agata almost abstained from visiting the tunnels. Prospero was away for the first time since Bice’s resurrection, on a trip to Turin, the purpose of which he had shared with no one. Agata doubted piety had anything to do with the pilgrimage. He had instructed Agata to care for Bice in his absence, but he would not know if she failed to visit. It pained Agata to see Bice night after night, pained her to touch this living ghost of her cousin, to try to comfort her, while having no idea what to do to help her or who she might turn to for aid in undoing Prospero’s evil work. But in the end she could not bear the thought of Bice sobbing her dry tears through the night, expecting Agata to come. And so she went, the key to the workrooms in hand, since Prospero would not be there to let her in.

  She was surprised to find Beatrice out of her cell when she came into the laboratorium but was glad to see Prospero had let her wander a little. When Agata entered, Bice was in the room with all the books, sitting on the stone floor with no regard for its chill and leafing through the pages with her long, pale fingers. Agata saw illustrations of monsters and flayed-open bodies in the volume Beatrice held and averted her eyes, unwilling to so much as look upon the manuals for Prospero’s black magic. “Put those away, Bice. These books are unholy, and every one should be burned.”

  Bice looked up at her with milky-blue eyes. “I’m . . . learning.”

  She sounded for a moment like her old self, which somehow hurt Agata more than anything else had. Agata snatched up the foul book. “Read the texts I brought you, Beatrice. No good can come from these.” She replaced the book in its space on the shelf and offered her hand to Bice, who took it, standing unsteadily.

  They sat together for hours that night, free of Prospero’s presence, and Agata read Beatrice passages from the Book of Psalms by candlelight. Only later—much later—did she realize Bice had not asked for Miranda once.

  * * *

  Agata awoke to screaming.

  It had been her custom to return to her bed for two or three hours before the sun rose, to get some sleep before the rest of the castle began its day in earnest. She felt that she had barely been in bed a half hour before she heard the commotion coming from the direction of Miranda’s room, just a few doors down from her own.

  She shook off sleep and wrapped her shawl around her shoulders, stepping out into the cold hallway. The shrieking was farther off now, as if someone were moving through the courtyard. She listened to the repetitive sound, her mind too sluggish to perceive it as anything more than a bird cry. But then a word began to take shape, and her feet moved almost before her brain had grasped the meaning. “Bice! Bice! Biiiiiceeeee!”

  She ran. She ran, fire and darkness blurring around her. She ran and she ran and she nearly tumbled down the stairs, following the screams. There were more of them now. Many more, a chorus, spreading through the walls.

  She skidded to a stop as she came to the kitchens, for she could no longer determine the source of the sirens. The wall of sound pushed her to her knees, shaking with the knowledge of what must have transpired, what the name she heard all around her must mean.

  Bice had escaped. Had Agata locked the rooms as she left them? She remembered the press of the gold key in her hand, the burn of her muscles as she pulled shut the solid iron door, but the hour was late, and she was exhausted, bone-weary after weeks of shock and strangeness. Had she left the door open so that Bice could leave? Had she meant to free her, somewhere deep inside of her mind, somewhere that could not deny Bice the right to see her child?

  It seemed impossible. And yet: she could not be sure.

  “Agata.” The sound of her name cut through the clamor, though spoken at a volume much lower. Antonio staggered towards her, his sword drawn, his eyes wild. “Agata, it’s Bice. She—Prospero has—”

  “I know.” She could not deny it. She stayed kneeling before him, and the words came out as a plea for mercy. “I know, Antonio.”

  He stared down at her for a long moment and then seized her by the elbow, pulling her to her feet. “You aided him.”

  “I did not. I only—”

  “You conspired”—he jabbed a shaking finger into her chest—“you cavorted with forces of darkness, you perverted her memory, the memory of sweet Beatrice, who should have died ere wicked Prospero could make her his bride. Better you had died ere you beshrewed her—”

  She slapped him, the smack ringing out above the cries. He raised high his sword and then grabbed her wrist, dragging her to a cell in the northern tower.

  * * *

  It took a long time for Agata to reconstruct all that unfolded in the days that followed.

  Scraps of stories were passed to her between the bars of her cell by the servant women, along with her meager meals. Patrizia, long the person Agata could count on to tell her when anything of vital note occurred in the servants’ quarters, informed her that Stella, Miranda’s night nurse, had awoken to see a figure standing over Miranda’s bed, lifting the girl into its arms. Stella had screamed, and then the figure had come towards her, its finger laid over its lips. She saw, though she could hardly believe it, that the phantom wore the face of the duchess Beatrice.

  They had struggled over the child for a few moments until Stella’s howling brought the guards from the entrance of the ducal apartments, who froze in place when they saw who held the duke’s daughter in her
arms. Bice darted past them, running down the halls, and they gave chase, following Bice to the tunnels and finally wresting the child from her grasp when she tripped, falling to the ground.

  “And then?” Agata shuddered to think what might have happened to Bice after her capture. “What did they do to her then?”

  Patrizia lifted her hands, palms up. “Nothing. They were afraid to touch her, and let her go. Antonio was livid. No one has been able to find her, though Antonio has guards combing every inch of the tunnels.”

  Agata hated the flare of hope that thrilled her heart. She should not want Bice to escape. She should want this awful saga to come to an end. But the Beatrice she had once known would have run and found the best hiding spot she could. Antonio’s men could search those unmapped tunnels a thousand years and not find Bice if she wanted not to be found.

  But Agata knew Beatrice would not last long. Prospero’s magic was not perfected: he himself had told her as much. Whatever animated Bice’s bones would fade soon, and she would die anew down there, perishing in the lonely maze like a rat. Let her soul be saved, Agata pleaded as she waited in her cell, to the God she was no longer certain heeded her tainted prayers. Grant her entrance into your kingdom, O Lord, once her long suffering is done.

  Patrizia reported that Miranda was under armed guard day and night, and that Prospero had not yet returned from Turin. Agata knew this last part, for Antonio had told her what awaited him when he did. He had come to her cell the day after Bice’s escape and demanded she give over the identities of all Prospero’s lackeys and the keys to his rooms. She had done it. She had told him again that she had not taken part in Prospero’s dark deeds but only tried to ensure the salvation of Bice’s soul. “Tell that to the gulls,” he told her, his voice as sharp as a knife, “when we send you out to sea with my villainous brother. You have cast your lot with him. God, and Milan, will judge you both for his crimes.”

  She trembled as he left her, but she did not cry. She had no tears left to shed. She only hoped that Prospero’s spies would alert him to the coup brewing within the castle walls, and that he would stay away, far away, so that she never had to see his face again. She could think of no worser fate than facing her sentence by Prospero’s side.